Kennedy Ranch Mission: April 2012

Monday, April 30, 2012

Wrapping Up April

We celebrated Easter by attending an Easter Egg Hunt for the ranch children at Bishop Campbell's home on Saturday April 7th. (Sorry, no pictures!) Easter Sunday began with attending church to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and partake of the sacrament to renew our baptismal covenants to always remember Him and keep His commandments. In the afternoon, we had dinner with the other missionary couples on the porch of the Carroll House. (We eat together on the 2nd and 4th Sundays.)

Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave an excellent talk about the Savior at the October Conference: What think ye of Christ?

On April 19th we went to Epcot with the Mannings for the Flower and Garden Festival that they have each year from mid-March to the end of May. Elder Kennedy "murmured" some because he's not fond of amusement parks, but he was a real trooper and we praised him for that. The landscaping in the park was beautiful! We had some rain in the afternoon, but we donned our plastic ponchos and carried on. We had lunch in a pub in the United Kingdom section of the World Showcase. The Mannings met when they both were serving missions in England. The Fish 'n Chips were yummy! We called it a day several hours before the fireworks at 9 PM, but it was still a great day.

An English telephone booth outside the pub.

Topiary outside a butterfly garden.

Beauty and the Beast?

Bambi

Peter Pan

Toy Story

Mickey and Minnie

Winnie the Pooh

Mater from Cars (for Ethan & Grayson!)

Lady and the Tramp

The Mannings

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Marking & Branding

Marking and branding of the new calves has been in full swing this month. Bishop Jim Campbell, who is the foreman on Unit 11, invited us to his unit to see how it is done. One morning right after devotional, Elder Zeek and the Kennedys plowed through the early morning fog to Unit 11. They were working with male calves that morning. The calves were already separated from their mothers when we got there. Each calf came through a shute into a metal head-lock which keeps them almost immobile and allows the cowboys to flip the calf on his side for castration. In about 1 minute, a cowboy cut off the tip of the right ear, dewormed, vaccinated, and attached a "DCC 12" tag to designate the year of birth while the other two cowboys did the castrating and branding. Before the calf knew what was happening, it was over!

The Head-Lock

Vaccinating

Castrating

This 'n That

Our new missionary couple, who are replacing the Morgans, has arrived. John and Pua Zeek are from Hawaii. John has a plumbing company which their son is running while they are away. The Zeeks have 4 children and 17 grandchildren. They also brought "Kioni", one of their dogs, with them. They will be here for a year, but they are already talking about extending their mission for an addtional 11 months.

Elder & Sister Zeek

Just before the Zeeks came, the missionaries were invited to the South end of the ranch where they are clearing land for more pastures. We all got rides on the CAT "Challenger" which is a monster machine! It definitely gave us a feel for "a day in the life of heavy equipment operators" on the ranch. Running over trees is FUN!!

I think we'll keep our jobs as missionaries!!
(I am in white cap with CK in blue shirt)

Elder Kennedy gets his ride.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Ranch Rodeo

The Deseret Ranch Rodeo was held on Friday, March 16th. This is an annual event that they have been doing for 62 years!! We had been looking forward to this because we had just missed it when we arrived on April 1st last year. The rodeo is put on by the cowboys on the ranch and all proceeds are donated to the Central Florida chapter of Boy Scouts of America. Admission is an affordable $5 with children 6 and under FREE! A BBQ dinner including drink could be purchased for $6 with a corn dog dinner for $4. Additional drinks, popcorn, and candy sold for $1. T shirts and caps were also sold. Many calls came into the Carroll House for weeks before the rodeo for information about this very popular event!

The day of the rodeo the elders were busy cleaning up the rodeo grounds. Actually, seems like they were doing things related to the rodeo all week! The sisters not assigned to tours helped package the food in single serving portions. We did a tour in the morning and a BIG tour (with mostly Kennedy guests from the Tampa Bay area) in the late afternoon. We later found out we could/should have closed the visitors center in the afternoon! The Kennedys also were invited to the youth camp for lunch because the Ft. Lauderdale Stake Young Women had been camping there all week. We enjoyed that!

Our guests for the rodeo: Patrick's family, Bill & Ann Edwards, Roger & Jan Edwards, John & Debbie Dickson (Pat's in-laws), Lance, Nancy , & John Clark (friends of Pat & Heather), Lee & Marlene Robinson (Nancy Clark's parents), Jim & Jan Hunt (friends from St. Pete), and the Ben & Carlie Welling family including Carlie's stepfather Jesse. What fun!! Pat & Heather and the Clarks even camped out on the Carroll House lawn Friday night before returning home on Saturday. It took us a few days to recover which was a not-so-subtle reminder of our advancing age!

The day after the rodeo, a Jacksonville woman who attended our rodeo commented that she had been to many rodeos throughout her life and our rodeo was the most enjoyable. Why? "because it was so clean, i.e. no drinking, no smoking, no profanity, no smokeless tobacco, very family-oriented." We even had an opening prayer! We look forward to attending the rodeo next year with some friends who could not make it this year.

A big THANK YOU to Renee Jacobsen for sharing her rodeo pictures! Check out her website:
http://www.reneejacobsenphotography.com